Resources, information and support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer parents - PowerPoint Presentation

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Resources, information and support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer parents and their families.rachelep@rogers.comwww.lgbtqpn.ca

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Creating Our FamiliesInvestigators:Lori Ross, Leah Steele, Rachel Epstein, Stu MarvelStaff:Datejie Green, Lesley Tarasoff, Scott AndersonAdvisory CommitteeFunding:Canadian Institutes for Health Research

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Qualitative study: 40 interviews with 66 LGBTQ individuals across Ontario who have used or considered using Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) services since 2007.

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Reproductive technologies are threateningReproductive technologies, by separating gametes from bodies from identities, create possibilities for new forms of family building. As such, they can threaten the stability of the normative nuclear family and the hyper-conventional gender roles attached to that model, and make apparent the fragility of sexuality and gender.

Charis Thompson

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The technologies are normalizedIn the face of these innovative and potentially scary technologies and the related destabilizing of biological sex and gender, the technologies are normalized and innovative forms of reproduction and family building are made less scary by linking them back to conventional gender roles and familiar kinship configurations. Fertility clinics are hyper-gendered spaces, in the business of repairing damaged conventional femininities and masculinities.

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The Heterosexual MatrixGendered body parts (ovaries, uterus, testicles, penis) = gendered gametes (sperm, eggs), = sexed bodies (male / female) = binary gender identities (man / woman), normative gender expression (femininity / masculinity), normative sexual orientation (heterosexual), and normative sexual practice (heterosexual intercourse — which is called “sex”). The desire to have children in a heterosexual context is taken to be “natural” as are a set of feelings, attitudes, and

behaviours

associated with womanhood and manhood, femininity and masculinity, and maternity and paternity.

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Gender LabourIn the context of fertility clinics, all gender identities are fragile, contingent, and performative and their coherence is enabled by what Jane Ward calls “gender labour” — routinized forms of care work that serve to bolster or repair an individual’s gendered subjectivity.

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Agency through objectificationBody parts are separated from social identities.Human gametes (sperm, egg) and embryos temporarily exist outside patients’ bodies.

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Sam and RobAt our first appointment he suggested that I get a hysterosalpingogram where they inject dye in your uterus and flush it through your fallopian tubes and see if there’s blockage. My partner couldn’t come that day, and I was like “this is not a trans-friendly environment.” …So he (the doctor) was really struggling to get at my cervix. And it was painful. And when he finally was able to grab it—right when he started doing the spreader, he said, “So, have you heard anything about this trans guy in the States who’s pregnant? You guys don’t want that kind of publicity, do you?”And I was like “First of all, you’re... you’re actually inside my body at this moment and, you know, I’m actually not here to…um…be on TV. We want to have a baby and that’s why we’re here... that’s why we came to you”… And I’m alone. And let’s say that, hypothetically speaking, I did want to be on TV — which I didn’t — is

now

the time to have a conversation about what we could negotiate? Like, this is

so

inappropriate in a million ways. He was inside my uterus, like a thing that usually is only for pushing out… something was going in. And then like two seconds after, he said “Look there’s your uterus on the screen.” And then I left and I called Rob, and I was like “Holy Christ!”

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I would say that there was a complete objectification of my body. Like, the only reason I needed to be there was that my body needed to get pregnant. I don’t even think that they were dealing with me, it’s that they were dealing with my uterus. And I was carrying my uterus, so I had to be there, my partner didn’t.Actually I would have been fine if they were looking at my uterus-as-a-uterus as long as it wasn’t a uterus that had to be attached to a woman who felt a certain way about having a uterus. Like that actually would have been ideal… if I was just treated as a uterus.

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Dismantle the Heterosexual MatrixGendered body parts = gendered gametes = sexed bodies = binary gender identities

=

normative

gender

expression

=

normative sexual

orientation

=

normative

sexual

practice.

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A two-step process Dismantle the assumptions of the heterosexual matrix. Recognize LGBTQ kinship relations.

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Thanks!Dismantle the Matrix! Rachel Epsteinrachelep@rogers.com

www.lgbtqpn.ca